At 1530hrs yesterday (Friday) a very experienced and highly observant ranger colleague looking for snakes and birds on White Edge saw two bits of rusty metal sticking out of the ground. Each was easily identifiable as the tail fin of a WW2 mortar if you know what they look like.
Several other rangers deployed to assist. Sally at The Grouse kindly gave up a bit of her car park. The Derbyshire Dales team from Derbyshire Police turned up and i walked them up to the site and an exclusion zone was set up – with a few walkers asked / told to avoid that area of the Edge.
Ninety or so minutes later a SSgt EOD and his Cpl (EOD Driver) from 721 Sqn EOD RLC arrived from Chilwell. They radioed up that their intention was to detonate the devices. Then they were guided up by a ranger.
What we wanted to happen then was lots of det cord to be laid out and sticks of dynamite connected and a big plunge handle pushed and half of White Edge removed …
What actually happened – due in part to the recognition of the wildfire risk by all concerned – but mostly due to the extensive experience and qualification of the SSgt was far less dramatic … he approached the first device, laid on his front, had a look at it, stood up, and dug it out the ground. Then he did some arm movement code to his oppo then did the same with the second one. Then waved us over.
‘Jeezus you must have big balls’ i opined …. ‘If you used to jump out of perfectly serviceable aircraft then yours must be bigger than mine’, he replied.
I’m not sure about that !!
We then had a quick look at the mortars before the SSgt popped them in his bag.
Then there was 3 minutes of Ranger / Police / EOD banter before the EOD Team said they had another job to go to and they ran off down the hill and away.
For context, White Edge along with several other grtistone edges was used as a weapons range and a pre-Normandy Landings training area, which is why mortars occasionally get unearthed and why many large boulders there abouts are pockmarked by machine gun fire.
Many thanks to the Police and EOD for their help, and thank you to The Grouse for much needed cold drinks ‘on the house’ afterwards.
Half way through that incident we were advised by a local outdoor instructor about a lit barbecue at the Fox House end of the Houndkirk. A colleague ranger in our Land Rover deployed from the mortar incident to Houndkirk and invited the users to extinguish the barbecue.
We three rangers (who had all done a days work plus about 4 hours of volunteer rangering by that point) went for a deluxe meal in the Co-op sandwich aisle then back out on patrol. It was a lovely night …
A member of the climbing community persuaded people on the edge of (a large, very very dry, curlew nesting meadow called) Callow Bank to extinguish a fire pit.
At 2125 a large fire was observed by drone in the ancient woodland of Bole Hill.
We switched to a larger drone shortly afterwards that has a speaker and the ability to broadcast messages and also to speak through the speaker. We hovered over the fire and broadcast a pre-recorded message about fire-risk, the fact that barbecues and open fires are not allowed in open country in the National Park and that a ranger team was on its way.
As that one minute broadcast was ending the two people at the fire extinguished it and started packing up their camp.
When they eventually got to their car we spoke to them about the fire risk, about the devastation of the Goyt Valley by fire and about the numerous large signs that they had had to pass between their car and the fire site. Their reply was …
‘Yeah we saw all the signs but we just thought we’d risk it’
©️2025